Richard,
Here are some thoughts, based on my experiences presenting technical
concepts in G1-G6. YMMV!
How you present depends somewhat on your goals and your audience: Are you
trying to inform and/or entertain the children? What kind of presentation
media will be available (black/white board, overhead projector,
PowerPoint)? Will faculty and staff or other parents be present? How will
you judge 'success' ?
Me, I go for entertainment of the primary audience, the children. At that
age they are very visual-oriented, but not very conceptual. 'Programmer'
they understand (they think). 'System' may be incomprehensible.
'Mainframe' may be misleading. I opt for bright colored visuals with
simple pictorial messages (think "PC" + "Bank" + "$$$" level).
Keep sentences short, ask them several questions that require a show of
hands ("How many of you have a computer at home"?). Move your gaze around
a lot, look at everyone.
Explain things in terms of visual analogies that the children can
understand. ("Auto -- Mechanic" ; "PC -- Technician"; "Business Computer
-- Systems Programmer").
I *never* attempt to sell the idea of jobs or careers at this level. By
the time my audiences enter the workforce the technical landscape will
have changed too much. I also never spend any time on technical topics
(no examples of Cobol / C / java, no pics of PC innards, no diagrams with
boxes labelled "CPU", "peripherals", "internet".) I lose the audience
whenever I do.
What seems to grab them most (i.e., fewer fall asleep) is being able to
understand the link between what I do and what it causes to happen. "I
type the right stuff on the keyboard and the computer runs faster" is
incredibly inaccurate -- but they understand the basic message! And
that's all I ever cared about.
How do I measure success? By how many questions I get! This was the most
frightening part for me; being prepared to give a simple answer to almost
any question.
HTH. Good luck!
Lock Lyon
Compuware Corp
This is more of a Friday question, but I got busy Friday and didn't have
time to post. At my son's school, they are having parents come in and
talk to the class about their jobs. It's heartwarming that my son is
proud of me and wants me to come in and speak, but I'm at somewhat
nervous about trying to make what I do interesting or even intelligible
to second graders. Somehow I don't think that HiperSockets will be as
exciting to them as they were to me when I first heard about them.
I have some ideas, but I'm hoping that some of you have been through
this before and have some tips on things that worked (or didn't work!)
for you. How do you explain such a technical occupation to young
children? What props or visual aids would you use to illustrate work
that mostly goes on inside either our brains or our computers? Any
ideas you have will be appreciated.
Richard Heritage
Lead Systems Software Engineer
IT @ Johns Hopkins
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